Police show the fur of a wild giant panda in Kunming Tyler Higbee Youth Jersey , Yunnan province, on Wednesday. The female was shot by two farmers in the village of Longtai in December. [For China Daily] Eight teams of searchers are scouring nearly 40,000 hectares of forest for wild pandas in Southwest China's Yunnan province.

The search was prompted by the discovery of the first wild panda in Yunnan in modern times. The panda was killed by two farmers in Longtai village in December.

On Dec 3 Jared Goff Youth Jersey , a sheep was killed by an unknown animal. The next day, a farmer and his brother searched for the animal in the mountains. When the brother saw an animal in a tree, he fired one shot.

"The wounded animal fell from the tree and climbed to another tree Samson Ebukam Youth Jersey ," said Li Guo you, an officer with the Yunnan provincial Forestry Police Bureau. "Although the brother saw it was a panda, he fired the second shot and killed it."

Soon after the incident John Johnson Youth Jersey , a whistle-blower told police about some people trading bear meat. After confiscating meat from a buyer, police asked the Kunming Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences to conduct a DNA test and found that it was panda meat.

The brothers and eight people involved in the trade of panda meat have been nabbed by police.

Two other farmers in the village claimed to have spotted wild panda droppings.

Zhu Caiyun told Yunnan Television he found droppings with lots of bamboo leaves one day in February when he was collecting bamboo shoots on the mountain.

Ming Xinggui said he also had seen droppings with bamboo leaves. The next month, when he collected bamboo shoots on the mountain Cooper Kupp Youth Jersey , he saw a huge animal that looked like a panda, he said.

According to Zhang He min, chief of the administration bureau of the Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan Aaron Donald Youth Jersey , the earliest fossil of the giant panda, dating back 8 million years, was found in Yunnan.

During the Pleistocene era Todd Gurley II Youth Jersey , a period of geological time from 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, pandas were distributed from northern Myanmar to eastern China John Kelly Youth Jersey , and even as far north as the region around Beijing.

Today, pandas survive solely along the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau in six mountain ranges within Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces John Franklin-Myers Youth Jersey , in a habitat totaling about 23,000 square kilometers.

"The general consensus is that such rapid contraction must be ascribed to human population growth and land use rather than climate change," said Zhang Zhihe Brian Allen Youth Jersey , chief of the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Sichuan.

KIEV， Aug. 1 (Xinhua) -- A full-scale fighting may resume in eastern Ukraine with rising tensions between the government and the insurgents， a representative of pro-independence insurgents said on Monday.

"The situation may rapidly escalate into full-scale hostilities，" Denis Pushilin， the official envoy of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic to the Trilateral Contact Group on the Ukraine crisis， told reporters.

Pushilin accused the Ukrainian army of violating the Minsk ceasefire agreement signed in February 2015.

Meanwhile， the Ukrainian government military blamed the insurgents for stirring the violence， saying that the Ukrainian forces came under fire 85 times over the last 24 hours.

Later in the day， one civilian was killed and another one wounded during the overnight fighting near Yasynuvata town in Donetsk region， according to the insurgent-run DAN news agency.

Two insurgent soldiers were seriously injured in the hostilities， the agency added.

At least one government soldier was killed and six others were wounded， said Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko.

Hostilities had eased since September 2015， but this year in May the conflict flared up again as the two sides failed to find common grounds regarding holding local elections in Donetsk and Lugansk.

Overall， some 9，400 people have been killed and almost 22，000 others injured in the conflict that began in mid-April 2014.

NEW DELHI， Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- At least 500 cows have died at a government-run shelter in India's western state of Rajasthan， local media reported Saturday.

The deaths took place during the past two weeks allegedly due to the negligence of officials at Hingonia cow shelter in Jaipur， the capital city of Rajasthan.

"More than 500 cows have died in the last two weeks，" a local TV news channel NDTV quoted volunteers at the shelter as saying.

According to officials 266 laborers engaged as contractual workers at the cow shelter went on strike last month demanding their salaries， which have been withheld since May.

The cows were thus left unattended.

Government veterinarian Devendra Kumar Yadav told media most of the cows have died from starvation.

"They have not been properly fed and that is the reason behind most of the deaths，" Yadav said.

Officials were yet to disclose the death count of the cows at the country's biggest cow shelter and blamed rains for the deaths.

"All the city's sick cows are brought here and the other reason being ongoing heavy rains (monsoon)，" Bhagwat Singh Dewal， chairman of the shelter said.

According to Dewal around 20 cows die at the shelter every day.

Dewal also admitted the laborers' salaries were being withheld.

The shelter is said to have a yearly budget of about 3 million U.S. dollars.

Rajasthan is run by Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) and has a minister in charge of cow affairs in the state.

Majority of Hindus consider cow to be sacred， and its slaughtering is banned in most Indian states.

To defend cows， groups under the patronage of rightwing Hindu organizations have come up in rural areas of India to protect them and stop sale of beef.